Most Haredi Children Live In Poverty

A
new report issued today by Israel’s National Insurance Institute (NII) has found
Israel has 776,500 poor children, and almost two-thirds of them are haredi. The
report also found more than half of all haredi families, 54.3%, are
poor.

Most Haredi Children Live In
Poverty
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
A new report issued today by Israel’s National Insurance Institute (NII) has
found Israel has 776,500 poor children, and almost two-thirds of them are
haredi. The report also found more than half of all haredi families, 54.3%, are
poor.
NII’s Director General Shlomo Mor-Yosef gave the new poverty report to
Israel’s Minister of Social Affairs Haim Katz this morning, Kikar HaShabbat reported.
In all, there are 444,900 poor families in Israel last year for a total of
1,709,300 poor people overall, of which 776,500 children. Nearly one out of
every three Israeli children are poor.
The poverty rate is also rising - 18.8 percent in 2014 compared to 18.6
percent in 2013.
52.6% of Arab-Israeli families are poor while overall, 23.1% of Israel’s
elderly are poor.
Cuts in government-issued child allowances passed in 2013 caused the poverty
to rise overall from 23% to 23.3% in 2014. Those child allowances primarily
benefit haredi and Arab families and were maintained in large part as special
welfare for haredim meant to support the common haredi refusal to work in
exchange for haredi support for the ruling coalition.
Arab-Israelis face widespread discrimination in the workforce, which heavily
contributes to the rate of Arab-Israeli poverty, as does the refusal to allow
women to work, which is common in the more traditional Arab Israeli
communities.
Haredim also face some employment discrimination, but it is less prevalent
than that faced by Israeli-Arabs. The high rate of haredi poverty is due almost
exclusively to the large number of haredi men who refuse to work and to the
abysmal state of haredi education. Haredi yeshivas don’t teach math, science,
English, computers, Modern Hebrew language, world or Israeli history, or civics,
and its graduates overwhelmingly do not earn high school diplomas. This makes
haredi men very difficult to employ and ensures a widespread poverty in the
haredi community.
Israel’s rate of poverty s the highest in the West.